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Leading items and editorialsGNOME goes for world domination. If any one group could be said to have dominated the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo this time around, it would have ![[GNOME]](/2000/0817/gnome-logo.png){kind=logo}
to be the GNOME project. We'll start with an overview of what has been
announced, then get into some thoughts of what the implications are.
In a way, the most interesting part is that last press release. Nobody can accuse the GNOME folks of being insufficiently ambitious; according to the release they plan to "establish the GNOME user environment as the unifying desktop for the Linux and UNIX communities," as well as working toward "establishment of the GNOME framework as the standard for next-generation Internet access devices." Those are big goals. And with the sort of support that GNOME is drumming up, there is a possibility that those goals could even be achievable. The addition of StarOffice and Mozilla - if it can be made to work well - will also help. If GNOME achieves its goals, it will have a fundamental role in assuring the long-term success of Linux as a whole. Of course, there are a few little obstacles to overcome. The easiest will be CDE and Motif, which can probably be considered dead as of this announcement. The recent Open Motif effort is far too little, far too late. GNOME has surpassed it, and the Unix vendors are abandoning it. But then, there is the matter of KDE. ZDNet has already written an obituary for KDE in an article entitled Hello GNOME, Adios KDE: "In the end, one side had to win. And in this zero-sum game, that meant the other side had to come up empty." Let us ignore the fundamental misunderstanding of free software betrayed by calling it a "zero-sum game;" the important question is: is KDE doomed? The KDE project has done a more than credible job of creating a top-quality desktop environment that is arguably still ahead of GNOME. KDE has a large and committed development community, and is rapidly heading toward a long-awaited 2.0 release. One can probably assume that the KDE team isn't ready to just give up. It is also worth noting that the distributors most closely associated with KDE - such as Caldera, Corel, MandrakeSoft and SuSE - are not a part of the GNOME Foundation. We asked KDE spokesperson Robert Williams what he thought of the matter; here's what he said: We feel that we have a superior product than GNOME, and that people will see this when KDE 2.0 released. The press GNOME is getting will make us re-double our development and our PR efforts. In fact we do not have much of a PR presence, we prefer to rely on our technology. But that is going to have to change. GNOME is getting a lot of backing and we have to speak up. We plan on getting KDE out there more in the press. We will let GNOME have their week, but the war is not over :-) I will tell all of our millions of users out there, that KDE is here to stay! (Also see LWN's conversation with KDE hacker Kurt Granroth on this subject). The free software world is certainly richer for having two approaches to desktop software to choose from; better cooperation between the projects might be nice, but it's not necessarily a good thing for one of them to "unify" everybody's desktop in the near future. GNOME may not take over quite as quickly as it might hope. But these developments are good news; Linux has just gotten stronger. World Domination is that much closer. (See also: "we're joining" press releases from Eazel, Red Hat, Sun, and the Object Management Group; this transcript of the press conference by Raph Levien; and Sun's home page which, as of this writing, features GNOME prominently).
LinuxWorld. The LinuxWorld Conference and Expo is still going on as
your increasingly frazzled editors write this. You will find coverage of
The most important thing that has come out of the fourth LinuxWorld may well be that it has served notice to the world as a whole that Linux is alive, well, and getting stronger. The end of the weirdness in the stock market was in no way indicative of the demise of Linux. It will likely seem strange to most readers of this publication, but an awful lot of people seemed to think that, once the ridiculous stock prices went away, Linux's hour had passed. Much of the coverage in the mainstream press served to reinforce this perception. Linux was a passing fad. Everything about this conference, from its long sold-out exhibit space to the incredible pile of commercial announcements, has told the wider world in a language it understands that Linux and free software are here to stay. The Linux stock shakeout did not even slightly slow their momentum. After all, free software never had anything to do with stock prices. Free software is about freedom. And the advantages of freedom are compelling. Free software is the future, and LinuxWorld is helping to make that clear. LWN's coverage from the conference so far includes a report from Michael Dell's keynote, and a summary of the Debian press conference. More to come. Linux-based palmtops are here. A few announcements at LinuxWorld have made it clear that the days of running proprietary operating systems on handheld systems are almost over. Here's a quick look at what's up.
PocketLinux starts with a 2.4 kernel which has been "reengineered" for small devices. Added onto that is, of course, a version of Kaffe; Transvirtual sees Java as a way of writing code which is portable across a wide variety of handheld systems. Throw in heavy use of XML to "represent all data in the system," and there should be enough buzzwords here to satisfy just about anybody. There are also nifty tools (such as a synchronization utility) and the obligatory theme support. PocketLinux is currently running on two systems: Compaq's iPAQ and VTech's Helio. VTech has announced that it will be supporting PocketLinux directly. Compaq has been more quiet, but the rumor mill says that helped support the development of PocketLinux on the iPAQ. None of the PR says anything about which distribution is used in PocketLinux. However, the Debian logo on the PocketLinux site and Jim Pick's presence at Transvirtual provide some fairly strong hints. PocketLinux is licensed under the GPL, and it can be downloaded from this page. Meanwhile, Agenda Computing has announced a Linux-based PDA of its own. The "Agenda VR3" comes in three variants, with the entry system going for $149. A good look at the Agenda system can be found in this LinuxDevices.com article; author Rick Lehrbaum wants one... Inside this week's Linux Weekly News:
This Week's LWN was brought to you by:
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August 17, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Security page. |
News and EditorialsPerlMx beta available from ActiveState. ActiveState has released a beta copy of its PerlMx extension to sendmail. PerlMx allows the creation of Perl scripts which run inside the sendmail system; these scripts can do things like reject, log, or rewrite mail. Clearly it's a scheme which gives administrators a flexible way of managing their mail systems. LWN asked ActiveState about the security implications of having a Perl interpreter running as part of sendmail. It turns out that the PerlMx system runs as a separate process in its own context. Thus, it can run without any sort of special privileges, which makes a lot of things easier. As long as the communication channel between sendmail and PerlMx remains secure, it should be very hard to introduce new security problems with PerlMx. SSH Communications changes ssh license. SSH Communications has announced a change to its licensing terms for ssh - it can now be used free of charge on Linux and the BSD variants for any purpose. It can also be included in distributions - but you have to be a "qualified developer" and get a license first. Most other applications still require a license fee from the user, though they do generously allow university contractors to use it for free. This change is an obvious response to the increasing popularity of OpenSSH - why else would it be targeted at users of free systems?. It looks much like too little too late, however. It is still not free software in any way; OpenSSH, instead, is truly free and highly capable. The outcome of this particular battle seems fairly predictable. August 15 Crypto-Gram newsletter. Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram newsletter for August 15 is out. Included therein is a description of Mr. Schneier's new book Secrets and Lies, which, like most of his stuff, should be very good. There is also a heads-up on the possibility of security problems in the Bluetooth protocol. "If Bluetooth is secure, it will be the first time ever that a major protocol has been released without any security flaws. I'm not optimistic." Security ReportsVulnerability in Zope 2.*. Digital Creations has issued an advisory regarding a security problem with all versions of Zope prior to the (just announced) 2.2.1 beta 1 release. The vulnerability could allow users who already have sufficient access to edit DTML to give themselves a higher level of access; it does not appear to expose Zope-based sites to the world as a whole. There is a "hotfix" available which closes the hole; see the advisory for details.There is also a new release of ZEO available; ZEO users who are upgrading to the 2.2.1 beta 1 release will need to apply this upgrade as well. A number of distributors have issued updates to fix this problem:
Trouble with usermode. The usermode utility allows unprivileged users to shut down and reboot the system. It also, apparently, allows them to put the system into single-user mode, which may not be what the administrator had in mind. A couple of vendors have shipped fixes: Buffer overflow in UMN gopherd. Some people, evidently, are still using Gopher after all these years. A buffer overflow problem in UMN's gopherd was reported this week. A fix is available, see the announcement for the location (but don't use the patch in that message, see this update instead). Commercial products. The following commercial products were reported to contain vulnerabilities:
UpdatesMore on Brown Orifice. For those of you wanting to read more about the Netscape "Brown Orifice" vulnerability, here is an advisory from CERT on the subject. "As of the writing of this document, we have not received any reports indicating exploitation of this vulnerability outside of the context of obtaining it from the Brown Orifice web site."Also of interest is this posting by Andreas Greulich exploring some of the scarier implications of the Brown Orifice problem. It seems that, with some cleverness, BO can be exploited to explore internal web sites (behind) a firewall, and to make use of a user's personal certificates. This is actually a pretty scary bug, at least for some users. SGI kernel update. SGI has finally gotten around to putting out a kernel update fixing the capability vulnerability closed by 2.2.16.Trustix updates apache-ssl. Trustix has issued an update to its apache-ssl package, which has some file permissions problems. Perl/mailx updates continue to trickle in; see last week's security page for details on this vulnerability.
NFS/rpc.statd . This week's updates: Previous updates:
MandrakeSoft updates MandrakeUpdate. Linux-Mandrake's
MandrakeUpdate utility has a /tmp race problem which is fixed with
this update. The problem is described as "a
very low security risk."
Netscape/Mozilla JPEG marker vulnerability.
Update to diskcheck. Conectiva's diskcheck package has a /tmp race problem; an update has been provided. ResourcesA new mailing list for discussion of penetration testing and network auditing techniques has been announced.Here's the Linux Security Week Newsletter from the folks at LinuxSecurity.com. EventsAugust/September security events.
Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
August 17, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Kernel page. |
Kernel developmentThe current development kernel release is 2.4.0-test6, which Linus released just moments after LWN was published last week. There is a 2.4.0-test7 prepatch out there, currently in its fourth revision. Linus has picked up a nice new habit: sending out changelogs for his releases; here's the changelog for 2.4.0-test7-pre4. The current stable kernel release is still 2.2.16. A prepatch (2.2.17pre17) went out on August 15, but there has been no announcement for it, so far. vger.rutgers.edu is down due to a disk failure as of this writing, and has been for about a day. That means that the linux-kernel mailing list (along with many others) is not currently functioning. For those who are used to the 150-200 message per day linux-kernel stream, things seem awfully quiet and peaceful. At the Ottawa Linux Symposium David Miller said that the lists were going to move over to a new machine (vger.redhat.com). It may be that he'll take this opportunity to make the move. Multistream files - again. Every so often, the kernel development list seems compelled to go through a discussion of whether - and how - Linux should support multistream files. This time around it started with a query as to whether Linux had any sort of support for streams along the lines of NTFS. The requester got his answer ("no") fairly quickly, but the discussion went on rather longer than that. A lot of people like multistream files. They let you do things like attach a thumbnail to an image file, attach "sticky notes" to a document, any many other things. Complex information can be attached to a file which simply stays out of the way for most actual uses. The concept is not without its merits. Nonetheless, quite a few kernel developers feel that Linux has no business supporting multistream files. Such files certainly twist the normal Unix way of dealing with data. They also present practical problems: how do you make cp copy a multistream file properly; how do you get tar to back it up? Most network protocols (i.e. FTP, HTTP, NFS, etc.) also do not understand multistream files. Just as the kernel developers were getting going with the ritual trashing of the multistream file idea, Linus joined in with a statement that Linux should support the concept. His reasoning is simple: like it or not, there are several filesystems out there which implement the multistream concept. If Linux is to play well with other systems, it has to support those filesystems. And a proper job needs to be done of it - meaning that multistream files need to be supported well. A number of ideas were raised on how to implement the multistream concept. At one end of the scale is Pavel Machek's unfortunately named Podfuk utility, which shoves the work into user space. A commonly-raised idea is to make a multistream file appear to be a directory, with each stream looking like a file within that directory. If the file itself is opened, the operation is remapped to a default stream (often known as the "data fork") within the file. There are even schemes for automounting some sort of specialized filesystem on top of multistream files when they are opened. Those are all just ideas, however. The fact is that Linux is far from any sort of proper multistream file implementation, though a hack for Apple's HFS does exist now. But the door has been opened, and such a thing will probably go in at some point. The OpenXDSM project launches. XDSM is the "Data Storage Management" API; it is apparently oriented toward hierarchical storage and data migration tasks. The OpenXDSM project, which announced its existence this week, has set out to create an open source XDSM implementation. Thus far they have some support from BigStorage, Inc, a SourceForge page, and not a whole lot more. Obviously, they are looking for interested people to help out. Other patches and updates released this week include:
Section Editor: Jonathan Corbet |
August 17, 2000 For other kernel news, see: Other resources: |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Distributions page.
Lists of Distributions |
DistributionsPlease note that security updates from the various distributions are covered in the security section. News and EditorialsDebian 2.2 released. It has finally happened: Debian 2.2 has been released. The first major release out of Debian in a year and a half contains no end of new features, additional packages, and more - see the announcement for an overview. A worthwhile quote from the announcement: Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 is dedicated to the memory of Joel "Espy" Klecker, a Debian developer, unbeknownst to most of the Debian Project, was bedridden and fighting a disease known as Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy during most of his involvement with Debian. Only now is the Debian Project realizing the extent of his dedication, and the friendship he bestowed upon us. So as a show of appreciation, and in memory of his inspirational life, this release of Debian GNU/Linux is dedicated to him.
Free software releases seem to require a press conference anymore, and Debian was no exception. The conference at LinuxWorld featured numerous Linux luminaries (including Linus) and a big screen showing an IRC session with Debian developers worldwide. LWN's Liz Coolbaugh was there; see her report for the details. The list of new features in Debian 2.2 is long; it includes:
Congratulations are due to all members of the Debian team, who have worked for many months to get this release out. Caldera OpenLinuxCaldera's new management tool is coming. Caldera has announced that its "Cosmos" management product is going into a (closed) beta test. No word as to when it will be more widely available. CorelCorel Launches Corel(R) Linux OS: second edition. Corel has announced the release of the second edition of its Linux distribution. It will begin shipping by the end of the month. CorelDRAW has also been released. By all accounts, the second edition is not a radical change from Corel's first effort - it's mostly a polishing and fixing up sort of release. DebianDebian Weekly News. The Debian Weekly News for August 15 is out. It covers, of course, the release of Debian 2.2 and LinuxWorld. Worth a read: here's a posting from acting release manager Anthony Towns containing acknowledgements of those who slaved away to make the 2.2 release happen, a sort of post-mortem on what could have been done better with the 2.2 development cycle, and a first look forward at what Debian plans to do in the new, "woody" development cycle. Wondering whether to try Debian? If so, consider having a look at the Debian Advantages HOWTO for a bit of advocacy... EmbedixLineo announced the release of "Embedix Realtime," a version of its embedded distribution with hard realtime support. There is no mention in the PR of which realtime Linux patch has been used, but, chances are it's RTAI since Lineo is a supporter of that development. Lineo also announced plans to make a version of its Embedix developers kit for Windows users.Fd LinuxFd Linux is a floppy-based mini distribution which has just had its 1.0 release. It's based on Red Hat, but, obviously, is rather smaller.HA-LinuxWhat is HA-Linux? It's a new, high-availability distribution from Motorola, which is based on Red Hat 6.2 and runs on Motorola's boards. Some more information can be found in this announcement.Linux-MandrakeMandrakeSoft announces Corporate Server 1.0 SPARC and UltraSPARC platforms. MandrakeSoft has announced the availability of its "Corporate Server 1.0" product on SPARC systems. "This port will significantly expand the reach of Linux-Mandrake within the enterprise." MandrakeSoft has also announced that it will be bundling OpenSales' products with the Linux-Mandrake distribution. This release also, interestingly, refers to Linux-Mandrake twice as "the world's most popular Linux distribution." Red HatRed Hat has announced that it will provide a distribution and support for AMD's 64-bit processors.ROCK LinuxThe ROCK Linux PowerPC Port. IBM sponsored an RS/6000 B50 box for the PowerPC port of ROCK Linux. "It's not ready for production use at the moment, but most of it builds allready fine and works as one would expect. First binary releases for RS/6000 systems are planed for the next weeks." Stampede GNU/LinuxStampede GNU/Linux 0.90 ("HappyValley") has been released. There does not appear to be any sort of announcement or release notes available; a brief news item and downloads are available on the Stampede web page.SuSE LinuxSuSE to port Linux to AMD's 'Sledgehammer' processor. SuSE and AMD have announced that SuSE will "drive" the port of Linux to AMD's new, 64-bit "Sledgehammer" processor. Much of the work - the compiler and binutils - has already been done by SuSE hacker Jan Hubicka. IBM to ship a SuSE disk with every European Netfinity. IBM and SuSE have announced an "advanced marketing agreement" where every Netfinity server sold in Europe will be shipped with a SuSE 7.0 disk. It will be a single-disk version of the distribution, and one which can run directly off the CD so that people can try it out easily. SuSE 7.0 certified for Oracle 8i. SuSE has announced that its 7.0 Professional Edition is "tested, certified and optimized" for Oracle 8i. The announcement talks about the features included by SuSE which support high-end Oracle use, including raw I/O, large memory support, large file support, the logical volume manager, and ReiserFS - all of which are 2.4 kernel features or (in the case of ReiserFS) not currently included even in the 2.4.0-test series. TurboLinuxTurboLinux does some deals.
Moving upscale, TurboLinux has also announced that HP is preinstalling its distribution on all of its "Kayak" Linux workstations sold in North America and Europe. Finally, TurboLinux and SGI have announced a deal where TurboLinux's upcoming IA-64 distribution will include SGI's "breakthrough" compiler. 64-bit GNOME. TurboLinux has ported Helix GNOME to the IA-64, and makes a big deal about being the first to do so. Section Editor: Liz Coolbaugh |
August 17, 2000
Please note that not every distribution will show up every week. Only distributions with recent news to report will be listed.
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Development page. |
Development projectsNews and EditorialsIn last week's development page editorial, we ventured into the realm of sci-fi and discussed the idea of a 3 dimensional window manager. As it turns out, 3DWM is already a real project from Chalmers Medialab and a new version (0.2) has recently been released. 3DWM is licensed under LGPL. This week's back page also has a few letters to the editor discussing 3D window managers. Maybe the future's already here.The LI18NUX2000 Globalization Specification has been released by the Free Standards Group. This specification is aimed toward standardizing the internationalization features of Linux distributions; it "includes the best of globalization functionality that commercial UNIX systems have successfully implemented and compliments the functionality with extensions that will make Linux Internationalization comprehensive for all national and local requirements." The standard also prescribes practices for programmers who want to write truly portable, internationalized code. The standard itself can be found on the LI18NUX site. A quick glance reveals an immediate obstacle to adoption: it looks like the output of standards committees everywhere. It will take a dedicated programmer, well equipped with caffeine, to get through it. But that is the nature of the beast. Linux is very much an international system, and it is good practice to code with a whole world full of users in mind. LI18NUX has taken a step toward showing how best to support the world, and that is a good and useful thing. Case study: Porting DB2 to Linux. IBM has put up an article on its DeveloperWorks site detailing how the port of the DB2 database to Linux was done. "As is the case with many Linux projects, the original DB2 port was done when no one was looking. Way back at the end of 1997, two Linux fans on the IBM DB2 project team, Leo Comitale and Peeter Joot, copied the DB2 source code tree to their desktop Linux boxes and worked on compiling it in their spare time." Worth a read. BrowsersMozilla Developer Meeting and Dinner, Aug 18, 2000. Alphanumerica is sponsoring the second Mozilla Developer Meeting at the Netscape campus in Mountain View, California on August 18, 2000. The Mozilla Developer Day Dinner 2000 is being held afterwards in Mountain View. An RSVP is requested. DatabasesPostgreSQL benchmark results. Great Bridge LLC has issued this press release claiming that PostgreSQL has not only beat two commercial databases in a set of benchmark tests, but that it stomped MySQL and InterBase as well. "The two industry leaders cannot be mentioned by name because their restrictive licensing agreements prohibit anyone who buys their closed source products from publishing their company names in benchmark testing results without the companies' prior approval." GamesRed Hat and Indrema establish Linux distribution for gaming. Indrema and Red Hat have announced an alliance to jointly manage a distribution called "DV Linux", which will be oriented toward gaming and home entertainment applications. "The Red Hat and Indrema partnership will ensure that a universal standard for next-generation video game development emerges to avoid fragmentation in the various Open Source multimedia initiatives." Indrema has also announced a deal with Collab.Net to build the "Indrema Developer Network." And if that weren't enough, there is also a deal with Linuxcare to provide support for game developers. bombermaze 0.5.1 released. Bombermaze is a Bomberman clone for Gnome that involves running around in a square grid maze, dropping bombs, and collecting power-ups. InteroperabilityWine Weekly News for Aug 14, 2000. This week's Wine Weekly News is out. Topics include numerous bug fixes and dealing with wininit.ini. Office ApplicationsSketch 0.6.8 released. Sketch 0.6.8 is a general purpose vector drawing program written in Python. Sketch can import and export EPS format files. Sketch is released under the GPL license. VINE integrates mail and news into VI. If you are tired of the VI editor's small memory footprint and fast execution speed, check out VINE, the Vim Integrated News and Email project. Kidding aside, this might be a useful addition for the VI die-hards. (Found on NTKnow - where else do you look for that sort of thing?). On the DesktopSelecting GTK+ Widgets for a Simple Application (Linux Programming). Linux Programming has run this article by Donna S. Martin on selecting GTK+ widgets. The article takes you through the process of finding the right GTK widgets and assembling them into a working program. QTCUPS-0.2 released. A new release of QTCUPS has been released. QTCUPS gives Qt applications a common printer interface GUI to the CUPS (Common Unix Print System) package. CUPS is an improved Unix network printing system and version 1.1.2 has recently been released. The Quanta HTML Editor (Linux Gazette). The Linux Gazette takes a look at the Quanta HTML editor for KDE. "There has been some time since I looked at Quanta and I must admit to being a bit impressed at the progress of the editor.All in all Quanta is a very nice HTML editor, very powerfull but with a major bug for non-English users that rely on extended ASCII for their webpages. I've also found somewhat more minor irritants in Quanta than when using Bluefish." Web-site DevelopmentZopeLDAP 1.0b4 / 1.0b4.1 patch. A new patch is available for ZopeLDAP that improves LDAP methods with Zope 2.2. Zope EventFolder 1.0 (final) release. A final release of the Zope EventFolder has been announced. EventFolder implements a calendar of events for Zope based web sites. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
August 17, 2000
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Development toolsJavaIBM releases Jikes Compiler as open-source. IBM has announced that the Jikes Java compiler project is now available as an open-source project. It's now licensed under the OSI-approved IBM Public License. JavaML A markup language for Java source code (IBM). IBM's developer works has run this article on JavaML. "The classical plain-text representation of source code is convenient for programmers but requires parsing to uncover the deep structure of the program. While sophisticated software tools parse source code to gain access to the program's structure, many lightweight programming aids such as grep rely instead on only the lexical structure of source code. I describe a new XML application that provides an alternative representation of Java source code. This XML-based representation, called JavaML, is more natural for tools and permits easy specification of numerous software-engineering analyses by leveraging the abundance of XML tools and techniques. A robust converter built with the Jikes Java compiler framework translates from the classical Java source code representation to JavaML, and an XSLT stylesheet converts from JavaML back into the classical textual form." PerlPerl 5.7.0 Release Imminent (Use Perl). Perl pumpking Jarkko Hietaniemi will be releasing Perl 5.7.0 (a development release) in the next few days. PythonPython-URL for August 15. Here is Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for August 14. Check it out for the latest in Python development activity, including the release of Quixote 0.002 and the new location of the Daily Python-URL. Python 1.6b1 released under a new license (O'Reilly). The latest release of Python has been released under a new license. "So negotiations began with Eric S. Raymond, Bruce Perens, and Richard Stallman in attendance. The negotiations were successful, and Python 1.6b1 was released with the new and improved CNRI license on August 4th." Latest additions to Python FAQTS. The latest additions to the Python FAQTS have been released. Integrating Python into a FORTRAN program is discussed among other things. Call for participation - IDLE. There has been a call for participation for the IDLE project. A separate fork has been created at sourceforge.net. SmalltalkNewsgroup comp.lang.smalltalk.advocacy created. A new newsgroup, comp.lang.smalltalk.advocacy has passed the vote and will be created. IBM announces VisualAge Smalltalk 5.5. IBM has announced the new version 5.5 release of VisualAge Smalltalk. New features include XML support and enhanced Java integration. Tcl/tkThis week's Tcl-URL. Here is the Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for August 14 with the latest in Tcl/Tk development news. Section Editor: Forrest Cook |
Language Links Erlang Guile Haskell Blackdown.org IBM Java Zone Perl News PHP Daily Python-URL Python.org JPython Smalltalk Tcl Developer Xchange Tcltk.com |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Commerce page. |
Linux and BusinessVa Linux Systems. VA Linux Systems is working hard at becoming a one stop shop for all your Linux and Open Source needs. They provide hardware, software, service and information. Now they have launched the Open Source Developer Network site. OSDN looks a lot like a configurable front-end to VA's other sites; future plans evidently include email hosting and instant messaging. VA has also announced a number of "charter members" of OSDN, including Compaq, EMC, Hewlett-Packard Company, IBM, Intel and Sun. eGrail has jumped in and announced its charter membership in OSDN. There is a separate announcement for its new online ordering system, which lets customers pick out the operating system components they want installed on their systems. High Availability and Clustering. A number of LinuxWorld announcements were about high availability and/or clusters. Here are some examples:
HP expands commitment to Linux. HP announced its increased interest in Linux. Included is the designation of Linux as a "strategic operating system," the intent to release MC/ServiceGuard - its high availability clustering system - for Linux; the ability to run Linux binaries on IA-64 HP-UX systems; a couple of its workstations will be made available with TurboLinux installed; and there is a 64-bit PA-RISC port available. Informix, Compaq and SuSE deliver Alpha Linux platform. Informix has announced the availability of its Informix Dynamic Server 2000 database running on the Alpha platform with SuSE's distribution. More certification news from LinuxWorld.
BSDI News. BSDI is getting into the hardware business with a line of rackmount server systems. They can be had with either BSD or Linux. Loki Software has announced an alliance with BSDI to port games to FreeBSD. Trolltech AS. Trolltech announced a collaboration with Lineo; Qt/Embedded will be packaged with Embedix. Trolltech also announced the preview release of Qt 2.2. And Trolltech's Qt/Embedded GUI code has come out of beta. Linuxcare. Linuxcare has announced a set of open source tools that manufacturers can use to determine if their systems are compatible with Linux. [Editor's note: Linux itself seems like a very good tool for that purpose...] Sun and Linuxcare announced the availability of Sun's StorEdge disk array for Linux, with Linuxcare providing support. Linuxcare has certified a number of systems from HP. Linuxcare has also developed a configuration tool for HP's OpenMail. TimeSys. TimeSys has announced its TimeWarp integrated development environment for its real-time distribution. Also, in a separate announcement, TimeSys talks about the cool features of TimeSys Linux/RT, and yet another PR announces the addition of multiprocessor capability. OpenSales unveils partnership program. OpenSales has announced a new partnership program "designed to provide its customers with a menu of services critical to conducting e-commerce -- while ensuring that the OpenSales AllCommerce(TM) application suite is freely available through multiple channels and interoperable with leading-edge technologies." The plan itself seems somewhat vaguely defined, but it has clearly drawn some interest. Here are announcements from Penguin Computing, Linuxcare, and CollabNet on their joining the program. OpenSales has also announced that Guardian Digital will be bundling AllCommerce with its business server system. Red Hat, Inc. to acquire C2Net. Red Hat has announced that it is acquiring C2Net, providers of the Apache-based Stronghold web server. The acquisition is happening for just under 2 million shares of stock. Blur Media releases 'Evolution of Linux' preview. Blur Media has announced the release of a preview of its "The Evolution of Linux" documentary. "'It's a hyper-postmodern project,' said film director Curtis Lee Fulton, 'I take the superfluous sounds and images I encounter around the different environments of interview sights and rearrange them, distort them and fold them into the context of my subject, creating a new meaning.'" Michael Cowpland quits. It's official: Corel has announced the resignation of Michael Cowpland as the President, CEO, and Chairman of the company. He plans "to dedicate his time and resources to new start-up opportunities" - evidently in the Linux area. Press Releases:Open Source Products.
Commercial Products for Linux.
Products with Linux Versions.
Java Products.
Books & Training.
Partnerships.
Personnel.
Linux At Work.
More LinuxWorld Announcements.By press time LinuxWorld will be nearly over. For those who missed it, or would like a recap, here are some press releases that came in prior to or during the event.
Other.
Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol. |
August 17, 2000
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Linux in the news page. |
Linux in the NewsRecommended Reading. Here's a Motley Fool "Fool on the hill" column about intellectual property. "A system based on charging people for copies they can easily make for themselves for free is not a stable situation. It just doesn't make any sense. More restrictive laws can't substitute for the consent of the governed.... The only way to deal with industries that refuse to change, and bet their existence on sustaining an obsolete status quo, is to hasten their destruction. Call it a mercy killing." Perhaps even a second quote is called for: "The reason Red Hat has been so much more successful than, say, Caldera Systems, is that Red Hat sees what it does as a service, and Caldera sees its intellectual property as a product it can control." Reports from LinuxWorld. Upside looks forward to LinuxWorld. "Here at Open Season headquarters we noticed the number of press releases, party invites and phone calls from P.R. folk rising about three weeks ago. In our heroic efforts to protect those downstream from a crushing wave of strategic partnership and incremental upgrade announcements, we've done our best to stem the flow. Unfortunately, with LinuxWorld only two working days away, we're going to have to resort to a controlled release." The Red Herring reports from LinuxWorld. "Trade shows like the Linuxworld Expo remain a safe haven for geeks, thanks to leaders like Linus Torvalds. Mr. Torvalds feels comfortable taking the main stage wearing shorts, white socks and sandals, and a yellow polo shirt featuring a Bugs Bunny cartoon. But Linuxworld is also now a must-attend event for buttoned-down executives like Michael Dell, whose keynote speech here Tuesday morning reinforces a growing theme: Linux is not only safe for business, it's a great way to make money." The San Francisco Chronicle covers LinuxWorld. "One sign of Linux's changing role was a keynote speech by Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell Computer, who has long been considered one of Microsoft's most loyal supporters in the industry." (Thanks to Michael J. Miller). The San Jose Mercury covers the LinuxWorld Geek Bowl. "The CEOs of three leading Linux companies did the worst -- Ransom Love of Caldera, Bob Young of Red Hat Inc. and Larry Augustin of VA Linux. Apparently CEOs don't have enough time to be geeks." The DukeOfUrl has put up some brief coverage of the first day at LinuxWorld. "This year's Expo is a bittersweet review of the whirlwind that the Linux community has gone through in the last year. We have seen numerous Linux companies go public and fall out of the IPO sky like flies. Yet, despite the financial backlash that Linux has received, we have not given up the fight." A couple of articles have popped up reporting on Michael Dell's LinuxWorld keynote:
The San Jose Mercury looks at LinuxWorld with a heavy emphasis on the end of the Linux stock mania. "This week's conference will focus less on stocks and business models and more on new products. From wristwatches to supercomputers, companies will show the 17,000 attendees the products they've only talked about in the last year." The Mercury has also put out a Linux timeline which begins in 1998. Articles Inspired by LinuxWorld Announcements.
IBM. ZDNet looks at IBM's server deal with SuSE. "Unlike a traditional bundling deal, where customers have the option of having an operating system pre-installed on a server when they buy it, IBM will load SuSE Linux 7.0 with all of the Linux servers it ships, according to sources familiar with the two companies' plans." ComputerWorld has posted this look at IBM's upcoming AIX release. "Linux application programming interfaces will be rehosted and optimized for AIX, while standard AIX libraries will be enhanced to support Linux. Linux applications on IA-64 based systems will be able to run on IA-64 based AIX 5L systems with a simple recompilation of the source code, according to IBM." Network World Fusion looks forward to IBM's LinuxWorld announcements. "Allowing Linux to exploit IBM's Chip Kill technology is a first for the open source operating system, according to IBM officials. The capability allows users to recover from 8-bit memory failures or even entire chip set failures." The Industry Standard reports on IBM's Linux watch. "Beyond telling time, the prototype has a to-do list, phone numbers, a condensed calendar, and the ability to store an image. IBM is working on enabling the gadget to understand voice commands, and eventually, the wristwatch would be able to download applications from a desktop and connect to the Internet and other devices through infrared." Upside chimes in on IBM's Linux-powered watch. "Sometimes you have to wonder what really goes on inside IBM. I mean, despite the Lou Gerstner makeover, the company still looks like a blue-suited behemoth that out-earns (and outspends) most developing nations. And yet, every once in a while, something beautifully trivial bubbles to the surface, giving a hint of the tortured engineering soul lying just below." Wired News looks at IBM's Linux watch. " When IBM announced that its research department had produced a Linux-powered watch on Monday, officials expected the news to be greeted with joy, if not downright reverence. Instead, many in the media and open source community responded with jokes about 'cluster clocks' and 'Dick Tracy watches.'" Companies. ZDNet comments on Michael Cowpland's departure from Corel. "Time and trouble had finally caught up with Cowpland. There was no longer enough belief in his early magic--magic that had enabled him to draw the fire of the Microsoft dragon and survive. With ever-mounting losses, key personnel departures and few left who believed that Corel was one more transformation away from profitability, Cowpland's day was done." Upside looks at the BSD systems, and cites applications and support issues as the reason for BSD being less popular than Linux. "However, as [Jordan] Hubbard and other FreeBSD loyalists are quick to point out, a savvy user can install MySQL or PostgreSQL -- two open source databases -- in a matter of minutes, using only a few make commands. To make things any simpler is to invite in users who have no business using the software." News.com looks at HP's Linux plans. "Like IBM, HP is bringing its entire server software line over to Linux. The effort started with HP's OpenMail email software, already used on Linux servers to power more than a million email accounts. It will be extended to include management software such as OmniBack backup software, Web QOS (quality of service) software to ensure priority Web site visitors get a snappy response, the TopTools device manager, and the Network Node Manager component of HP's OpenView management software." Reuters has run a brief article anticipating an announcement from HP. "Computing giant Hewlett-Packard Co on Monday will designate Linux as one of its three 'strategic operating systems' and add new products and services to support it." The Salt Lake Tribune inquires into the whereabouts of Lineo's IPO. "Lineo does have the advantage of selling Linux software for embedded devices -- considered a promising market. That is Lineo's saving grace, said Corey Ostman, chief technology officer of Alert IPO, a Web site on pending IPOs. He expects Lineo to complete its IPO, although the company may have to delay it until this fall." EE Times reports on the upcoming release of Blue Cat Linux 3.0. "LynuxWorks engineers say that the new operating system, known as BlueCat Linux 3.0, will serve as a foundation that ultimately could take Linux into new territory, including mission-critical applications in military and aerospace, as well as in printers and other low-end consumer products." News.com covers the posting of AOL for Linux on Techpages.com. "The company plans to use its Linux-based service in future Net gadgets. It has already struck partnerships with chipmaker Transmeta and PC maker Gateway to produce Linux-powered appliances slated for release later this year." Dan Gillmor looks at Aimster (a marriage of Gnutella and AOL's instant messaging system) in this San Jose Mercury column. "I'm no lawyer, but I suspect that the paranoid recording industry will sic its well-paid legal sharks on Aimster. I also suspect they'll lose this time, but the law has been tilted strongly toward copyright holders lately." The column also contains a long quote from John Gillmore on copying protocols which is worth a read. Here's a NewsBytes article on Aimster. "[Aimster spokesman John] Deep said that the company hopes to make Aimster an open-source platform capable of making other messaging programs such as ICQ available to Aimster users." News.com looks at the release of AOL's messaging service for Linux. "The move highlights the increasing legitimacy of Linux, a clone of Unix mostly used on heavy-duty server computers but increasingly popular as a desktop operating system." Gamecenter.com has an article about Indrema's upcoming console. "Indrema is a six-month-old California firm that's hoping to give Sony, Nintendo, Sega, and Microsoft a run for their money with its Linux-based open-source console platform. The Indrema L600 console will have a 600-MHz processor, 64MB of memory, an Nvidia graphics chip, and a GPU Slide Bay, which will allow gamers to upgrade the graphics processor every year for between $50 and $100 so they won't need to purchase a new console." Business. Here's a Business Week Daily column which suggests that Linux stock prices may have bottomed out. "Linux was practically unknown for the first seven years of its life until the media discovered it in 1998. Then it was hailed as the cure-all for every computer woe. This hubbub has finally died down. That's good news for those with money to invest. Even as the Linux stocks reenter the atmosphere, prospects for the operating system are blasting off." c't has run a detailed comparison (in German) of Linux and Windows, focusing on three particular usage scenarios. English text (partial - the article is long) is available via Babelfish. Heise Online has run a brief article on the comparison, talking primarily about web server performance (which was more-or-less identical between the two systems). Here's the Babelfish link. (Thanks to Manfred Scheible). ZDNet reports on the release of Oracle Internet Application Server for Linux. "If you doubt that this is anything save Oracle making a public relations point, think again. The Linux version of Oracle iAS is available for order today. Its Windows NT/2000 brother won't be out until September. Oracle is dead serious about supporting Linux as an enterprise platform." Here's News.com's take on the Netscape and Mozilla alpha releases. "Having seen Netscape's once dominant market share steadily eroded by Microsoft, some question whether the latest releases are too little, too late. Mozilla, which has long enjoyed the near-unanimous backing of the Web standards community for its commitment to producing a standards-compliant browser, has seen some support crumble in recent weeks because of continued delays." ZDNet questions the extent to which companies are really using Linux. "That Linux has appeal among Internet service providers and application hosting firms is a given. But just how much of a hold Linux already has established among Fortune 500 companies continues to be up for debate." Resources. The LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Weekly Newsletter for August 10 is out. Reviews. Tom's Hardware reviews five NVIDIA 3D cards under Linux. "One thing is a fact, NVIDIA's new Linux driver philosophy has finally opened up Linux as an operating system for serious 3D-gamers as well. It is certainly true that Linux doesn't support DirectX games, but there are quite a few Linux ports of OpenGL-based 3D-games available." (Thanks to Douglas Gilbert). Here's a review of HancomWord on the LinuxOrbit site. "In addition to the font problems, HancomWord doesn't have a spell checker in the pre-release version. I think most users will agree that a word processor without a spell checker is like eating soup with a fork, mighty frustrating and not very satisfying." LinuxDevices.com has posted this in-depth look at the Aplio Internet phone. "Since the idea of embedding Linux in small devices has only been around for a little over a year, the Aplio/Phone which was introduced in March, 1998 used the pSOS 'embedded' operating system as its initial software platform. But when it came time to design the next generation device, the Aplio/PRO, Aplio opted to switch to Embedded Linux -- for two main reasons: first, Linux is free from royalty costs; second, Linux source code is fully and freely available, resulting in great flexibility and configurability." Interviews. O Linux interviews Brian Behlendorf. "The software development is done without much serious coordination; basically we all just share a CVS tree and check in changes and enhancements. We do split it up by project and module, and each small subgroup has their own way of deciding what new features to add (or remove). Again, very decentralized." Linuxdevices' Rick Lehrbaum interviews Victor Yodaiken, project leader for RTLinux. "Yodaiken: I came up with RTLinux at NMT, but I had been working on realtime and related issues even back to my graduate student research. I started working at real-time programming to get a feeling for what were the hard things to understand, and it came to me that one of the hardest and most difficult things in trying to validate that a real-time program works, was to show that the non-real-time components didn't interfere with the real-time components. This led me to think about how you could make sure this didn't happen. " LinuxDevices has an interview with Alex Morrow, "IBM Fellow" at IBM's TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, and project leader of the IBM Linux Wrist Watch project. "Morrow: We think [the Linux Wrist Watch] is a breakthrough in Linux, getting Linux down into this size device. It's a good example of what we're trying to do, which is to see how broadly we can use Linux, and to demonstrate our commitment to having open platforms. Did you see the news about [Linux] going up into the Blue Gene computer, with Linux?" Finally. ZDNet looks at criticisms of Linux in this column. "These pieces, while not incorrect, indicate an ongoing and fundamental misunderstanding of Linux by chunks of the investment community. Linux is gaining market share while dramatically shrinking the operating system revenue base. There's no question that the hype of Linux is gone, but then it was these same analysts, not the Linux technical community, that superheated these prices in the first place." CFONet says to stay away from Linux in this report on servers. "[Meta group analyst Peter] Firstbrook objects to the very feature that most tout as Linux's number one asset--the fact that anyone can tweak the code--because it creates a situation in which an IT staffer may make changes that no one else knows about, and that probably go undocumented." News.com has run a column from Gartner analyst George Weiss that is dismissive of HP's Linux strategy. "HP has been somewhat disorganized in its earlier attempts to articulate its position, as fragments of Linux and open-source projects--for example, print servers, E-Speak and Linux for PA-RISC--have appeared in numerous parts of the company, with no unifying management or central focus." Section Editor: Rebecca Sobol |
August 17, 2000 |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Announcements page. |
AnnouncementsResourcesGuide to choosing a modem for Linux. SignalGround has put up this guide on how to choose and install a modem for a Linux system. It is detailed and comprehensive. EventsApacheCon Europe 2000 speakers announced. ApacheCon Europe 2000 has announced its speaker lineup for the October conference. Caldera will co-host Forum2000. The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. announced that Caldera Systems, Inc. will co-host Forum2000. Forum2000 is an international conference on server-based computing. The conference runs August 20-23 on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz. LuteLinux at the Linux Business Expo. Jay Daunheimer, President of LuteLinux will be presenting 'Getting to the Desktop. Breaking Windows', Tuesday, November 14th. The Linux Business Expo/COMDEX/Fall 2000 runs November 13-17, in Las Vegas Nevada. Pictures from LinuxWorld. LinuxPower has put up a few photos from LinuxWorld. LinuxNewbie.org has put up a set of pictures from the first day at LinuxWorld. Additional events can be found in the LWN Event Calendar. Event submissions should be sent to lwn@lwn.net.Web sitesIQLinux - Looking for a few good brains. IQLinux.com announces its new Linux support website - they are looking for "Linux Brains" to actually provide the support. apps.kde.com launches. A new site, apps.kde.com has hit the web. It is a large, hierarchical database of KDE applications; if you're looking for something specific that runs with KDE, this is the place to go. |
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Sections: Main page Security Kernel Distributions Development Commerce Linux in the news Announcements Back page See also: last week's Back page page. |
Linux Links of the WeekGigaLaw is a site dedicated to legal issues on the Internet. Like it or not, such issues are increasingly pushing their way into the free software world. Here's a site which can help interested people to stay on top of the situation. A discussion list has just been added as well. It may well be that not too many Linux people care about this, but spare a moment for us older folks... September 30 is the last day to order a VAX system. There was a (long!) period where an 11/780 running BSD was the computing platform of choice; it was the system that brought Unix into the virtual memory era. A moment of silence for a system that served us well... And for a dignified retirement for an 11/780, it's hard to beat the VAXbar. Section Editor: Jon Corbet |
August 17, 2000 |
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This week in historyTwo years ago (August 20, 1998 LWN): It appeared the Linux Standards Base might be in more trouble, as Bruce Perens' departure from the project was quickly followed by the announcement of two competing efforts. The Linux Compatibility Standards Project was announced as a collaboration between Debian and Red Hat to build a written specification on the "right way" to build a proper Linux system. It was designed to complement the LSB and guide application developers on how to build their applications for compatibility with multiple Linux distributions. Only the timing made this look like a competitor to the LSB, though. It was designed to be complementary and was eventually folded into the LSB. Not so innocuous was the announcement of the Linux Standards Association. As opposed to the community-based LSB, the LSA was designed more like traditional commercial standards organization; members were corporations that paid money. The content was not to be made available for free, founding members would have veto privileges and the initial website was created with Frontpage. The announcement was greeted with outrage on Slashdot and indifference from the community. Nowadays, we've proven that Open Source is a better way to produce cooperation between companies than membership fees. The LSA is gone and the http:www.linuxstandards.org/ site contains a letter indicating that the site will be redesigned to serve as a clearinghouse for information on standards relevant to Linux. More recently, the Linux Development Platform Specification version 1.0-beta (LDPS) was released by the Free Standards Project, the umbrella organization that now encompasses the LSB, the LDPS and the LI18NUX Project (Linux Internationalization Initiative). It is still hoped that a final draft of the Linux Standards Base will be available by the end of year; certainly effort in this area is alive and well. Red Hat announced its "Rawhide" distribution - Red Hat's development version. One year ago (August 19, 1999 LWN): Red Hat shares jumped from an initial (split-adjusted) high of $26 after their IPO to a new level, $40 per share. Predicting many more public Linux companies to come, LWN announced its Linux Stocks Page and the LWN Linux Stock Index to track the performance of this sector as a whole. Also announced that week was the Red Hat Wealth Monitor, which tracks the value of the Red Hat stock distributed to the Linux community. Two years ago, it was worth $60 million. Even though Red Hat stock is back down to around $25 per share, the Linux Community stock is still worth around $39 million. For the umpteenth time, someone paved paradise, put up a parking lot. For the thousands of Linux coders who've build the utopian open-source movement - offering free help to create a free operating system - the IPO of Red Hat Software was a sure sign of Wall Street cutting the ribbon on the new Linux mall.
A Debian "potato" freeze was proposed for November 1. The Internet Auditing Project released the results of a year-long scan of the Internet. This ad-hoc project searched for sites with previously announced and fixable security vulnerabilities. For example, out of a list of 10 well known vulnerabilities, between 1 to 26 percent of the sites with the given service installed were running a vulnerable version. They likened these vulnerable systems to "wounds" in the Internet, indicating wide-spread illness. Certainly their findings predicted the potential for the distributed denial-of-service attacks that later took advantage of the proliferation of vulnerable systems to launch broad-scale attacks on well-known websites later that year. The project recommended the creation of an "International Digital Defense Network" to pro-actively search for vulnerable sites and work to get them to close their vulnerabilities. Discussion on the topic did not seem to take off and there have been no efforts in that area, to our knowledge. Meanwhile, Magic Software took some real grief for the two live penguins it brought to the LinuxWorld show floor. It seems the animal rights activists weren't too pleased with the idea... | |
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Letters to the editorLetters to the editor should be sent to letters@lwn.net. Preference will be given to letters which are short, to the point, and well written. If you want your email address "anti-spammed" in some way please be sure to let us know. We do not have a policy against anonymous letters, but we will be reluctant to include them. | |
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 10:50:27 -0400 From: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@snark.thyrsus.com> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: OSI "mostly dormant"? Not hardly! Anybody who thinks the Open Source Initiative is "mostly dormant", as claimed in the 10 Aug LWN, hasn't been paying attention. We continue to work hard -- and successfully -- at what have always been our primary missions. We help develop and certify OSD-conformant licenses; we act as a trusted channel between the hacker community and the corporate world; and we occasionally speak out on issues affecting the entire open-source community. Just recently, for example, we played an important role in negotiating the new Python license with CNRI and BeOpen. We may not be making the visible splash some other organizations are, but we're listened to where it counts -- by Fortune 500 executives and heavy Wall Street investor types on the one hand, and by leaders in the open source community on the other. As for the lack of "what's new" updates -- anybody want to volunteer to be our webmaster? Otherwise, I have to do it...and on my travel and work schedule, that's not going to happen really often. -- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a> Hoplophobia (n.): The irrational fear of weapons, correctly described by Freud as "a sign of emotional and sexual immaturity". Hoplophobia, like homophobia, is a displacement symptom; hoplophobes fear their own "forbidden" feelings and urges to commit violence. This would be harmless, except that they project these feelings onto others. The sequelae of this neurosis include irrational and dangerous behaviors such as passing "gun-control" laws and trashing the Constitution. | ||
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 19:40:08 -0400
From: Ian Danby <atdanby.KILLSPAM@mediaone.net>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Re:3D windows.
I really like the idea of a 3D desktop system. I believe that 3D done at
the GNOME/KDE level makes a lot of sense, and will be necessary for 3D
window managers to be written effectively while maintaining
compatibility. While the following is a long way off, I have a vision of
the future: 'Q3AFM'
'Q3AFM' will be a filemanager that looks like Quake3 Arena, whereby
other users are running around the file system at the same time.
Directory permissions will appear as rooms that only some users could
enter, with the door lock displaying the permissions. Other users can
pick up 'invisible' objects that you can't see. Deleting files is a lot
more fun! (Rocket Launcher ;)
Seriously though, this is a big step in office productivity, whereby an
office file server appears as an arena extension to the local users
arena, collaborative files appear as objects in that arena that can be
picked up and edited or moved to another location. (Of course, some
ojects are 'glued' in place as they are read-only, although you can take
a clone of the object.)
Traversing the directory tree downward involves moving down a slope to
the next room. Symlinked directories appear as portals to other areas.
Symlinked files have a shimmering blue appearance to them. RCS locked
files are in a cage. Executable objects appear as sleeping animals (/bin
is an ark maybe??). Lib files will appear as encyclopedias in an ornate
wooden library. Document objects are 'projected' onto walls for viewing.
('Conference' areas will be set up with a with lots of wall space, and a
umask that allows all documents in the room to be viewed by the
participants.) 'Copy and paste' becomes 'clone and drop'. 'Cut' becomes
'pick up'. File modification timestamps are visualized by organic growth
around the base of the object. Directory and file sizes are readily
apparant from the size of the room or object. Superusers appear as God,
and can make objects and users disappear. Users logging off collapse
before your eyes. 'du' sends you sprinting around the filesystem looking
at all the objects. Your $PATH is visualised as a series of viewports to
other rooms.
Personal arenas are set up according to the user's tastes, with weird
and wonderful textures to be found on on the walls, floors and ceilings.
Of course the reality will be:
Corporate arenas will probably all end up being dull gray corridors,
that fade over time and end up getting 'refreshed' only when user
'painter' logs on again in 2 years time.
An NT lava pit will have replaced that arena that held that really
important document that you needed.
Everyone would always be running through the hallways because they're
late for their 'chat' meeting or conference.
Monsters will start appearing in any arena that wasn't hidden behind a
wall of fire...The 3l33t r00t k1t monster looks really nasty.
Unfortunately, I don't have the coding skills necessary to do this. Any
takers??
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Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 23:17:32 -0600 From: Bruce Ide <nride@uswest.net> To: lwn@lwn.net Subject: 3D Interfaces I have considered 3D interfaces. The first thing that jumps to mind (What you describe in the August 10 issue) buys you nothing over a 2D environment and adds a lot of expensive computation. It may be cute but it's not the Interface of the future. I suspect augmented reality will be the next big step, and it's already available in the Airline industry if I recall correctly. Almost all the current market for wearibles is for airline mechanics who want to be able to see schematics overlaid on top of their current working environment. A lot of the uses are promising -- the MIT Remembrance agent, the facial recognition stuff the wearible guys were doing, attaching data to environments, and having the computer seamlessly integrate into your environment without forcing you to shift modes to use it... THAT will almost certainly be the next big interface step. I see a 3D interface evolving from that. Once you have the augmented reality, there will be times when people want to interface with the computer. Programmers will need to do it a lot. Chances are the 3D interface will have the user IN the environment. Turning ones head will cause the data to shift. Reaching out and grabbing or touching an object will operate on it. No need for a mouse -- the computer will be able to track your hand. Chances are by the time we get there, there will also be very smooth voice commands and the computer should be able to understand medium-complex commands. Moreover I foresee the concept of the rembrance agent becoming much more complex, such that when I'm working on spreadsheet data for the 2000 budget figures, a remembrance agent would make available to me an E-Mail thread about the 1999 budget figures (Perhaps popping up a 3D object on the edge of my vision?) Implementing rembrance APIs in Gnome/CORBA would be relatively straight forward. The hardware to implement most of this already exists. 3D is easy when you're using a headset. The amount of hardware you can fit into the space the size of a cigarette pack is enough to give you the basics of the Interface now. Much of the software already exists and only needs to be glued together. Expect to start seeing movement in this direction within the next two to three years. - -- Bruce Ide greyfox@paratheoanametamystikhood.net http://www.paratheoanametamystikhood.net | ||
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 13:10:40 -0500 From: "John J. Adelsberger III" <jja@wallace.lusArs.net> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: FreeS/WAN and Linux No US crypto law has changed. An executive order was signed, and that is all. Constitutional protection against ex post facto does not apply to executive orders, which are basically nothing more than "current" interpretations of laws. They are not the legally binding interpretations, which are set by court rulings, but rather are the interpretations the executive branch uses to decide what to prosecute and what not to. Nothing which was legal before is illegal now, and vice versa. Think about what would happen if, at some future time, a US president signed a new executive order requiring the prosecution of everyone who exported any strong crypto code, retroactive to the day the previous order was signed. Contrary to "common sense," this would be legal and quite effective. Canadians might well then be prohibited from exporting their own code on account of the actions of the leader of a nation they don't even live in. Moreover, many foriegn governments would happily prosecute people who "illegally" imported sources, although this is not an issue in Canada. (I'm not a conspiracy theorist, and I try not to ascribe any malicious motives to my government(I live in the US.) However, if the giant crushes you, you will be no less dead on account of his having been ignorant and/or stupid rather than vicious. Do not trust government, for it is big, stupid, and far more careless than anyone wants to believe.) -- John J. Adelsberger III ETAONRISHDLFCMUGPYWBVKXJQZ jja@lusars.net | ||
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 14:54:19 -0400
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>
To: letters@lwn.net
CC: timreason@cfopub.com
Subject: CFONet's "Don't use Linux" report, LWN Daily, 14 Aug
In his CFONet piece, Tim Reason tackles the (no longer especially)
tough topic of server uptime. Modulo a couple of missing lines in the
copy -- which make us wonder if *CFONet's* servers might be having
uptime problems, it's a pretty decent piece, delving into the topic in
more depth than the typical "number-of-9's" approach, and, indeed,
pointing out why that's not the best way to evaluate reliability in
the first place.
How much money you spend is not nearly as important, as the piece
noted, as what you spend it on. He goes on to note, and quote (Meta
Group's Peter Burris), that Total Cost of Ownership is a much larger
item than the cost of the box -- or, by implication, the operating
system.
In a sidebar ("The Cost Of Cool"), Reason quotes Meta Group analyst
Peter Firstbrook as saying "Linux should be shunned. It should not be
a part of the business process." He has two reasons, both of which
display, in my perception, a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic
at hand; I'll take them one at a time.
"It's free. So what."
Ok, so what? The *monetary cost* of Linux is not now, nor has it ever
been, the major issue... except, of course, that Linux' market
penetration is *substantially* wider due to it's low cost than it
might otherwise be. We won't go into the fact that this is a major
contributing factor to the current success -- and quality -- of Linux.
At the enterprise level, though, while purchase price of the OS is
indeed only a part of TCO, I don't believe it's even reasonable here
to say that it's so low a percentage as to be negligible. I'm sure
that the difference between $1,600 per machine and $69 per machine was
*not* unimportant to Jay Jacobs, who bought ~250 copies, nor the 1200
stores Burlington had to equip, and it damned well mattered to
Cendant, who are buying 4000 copies. And if you can download the free
version of RedHat and use that, well, 4000*$69 wouldn't be a bad bonus
on my salary this year, either.
Now, in these cases, admittedly, the amount of system adminstration
labor is not likely to be much different in cost than it would have
otherwise been: I'm pretty sure the competition was SCO Unix, et al.
But Firstbrook's other assertion is that the McGuffin here is that the
admin crew can modify the OS, and that this is a bad thing both for
traceability and in the amount of time spent just doing it, and I
think that this is pretty short-sighted for two reasons.
First, it is similarly untraceable when Microsoft or SCO make small
changes to *their* operating systems which might have a large effect
on your operations -- but at least with Linux, *you* have control over
whether such changes are made at all, and you can *impose* tracking.
(And, of course, saying "Well, I won't upgrade" isn't practical, due
to vendor support requirements.)
If you *can't* successfully impose such restrictions in a Linux
environment... well, that's not *Linux's* fault, now, is it?
Secondly, the very fact that you can modify the OS when necessary
isn't a bug, it's a feature (:-). I suspect almost everyone reading
this, if they have not been bitten already by the slow response of OS
vendors to security holes needing patching, has been at risk.
Stipulated: not everyone *does* keep up with such things, but isn't it
nice, from the viewpoint of a 4000-installation company, to know that
you *can*? If I was that big, I'm sure I'd have an employee tasked to
be all over that topic like a bad smell.
> Linux is out there and people are using it, but it is mostly because
> of the cool factor," he says. "Having somebody who can screw around
> with my operating system would make me very, very nervous," he says.
I hate to tell him this, but people can screw around with his
operating system, no matter what it is. Much of Linux's competition
in this space does not now, nor will it ever, give him the tools to
*prevent* it. As far as I can see, the ability to *audit* the OS to
make sure you know what it's doing is much pricier.
"...mostly because of the cool factor"?
Pshaw.
People are using it because, in general, to quote Tom Peters, "It
works, and it never breaks."
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff
The Suncoast Freenet
Tampa Bay, Florida http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 804 5015
| ||
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 2000 01:23:00 +0200 To: letters@lwn.net From: Hanno Mueller <kontakt@hanno.de> Subject: How ridicilous political discussions on Linux are Hello, I find the current discussion on LWN about the correct description of Open Source politics extremely irritating, if not ridicilous. Does the open source community have a shared political goal? One that fits in one of those already existing, neat little boxes labeled communism, socialism, anarchism? Almost every time this topic comes up, individuals try hard to back their personal views by referencing the "community". But good grief, have I heard lots of differing political views justified that way, sometimes by celebrities of the movement, and despite being a part of "us" as a long-time user, I hardly ever shared any of these opinions. And still use the software, even while I strongly disagree with ESR's views on gun control or RMS's ideas about the evils of closed-source. Last time I checked, the Kernel didn't come with a copy of the Communist Manifesto, there was no anti gun-control declaration included with Fetchmail, there was no una-bomber mode in Emacs and Apache didn't include transcripts of Great Chairman Mao's best speeches. There is a reason why this software is being used: It's useful and it works. There is a reason why people contribute: They can, it helps themselves and others and contributing gives them something back. But that's about it folks agree upon. "We" hardly ever agree on anything, the standard mode of software development in the open source world is the flame war. We can't even agree on the topic of the "best" open source software license. So how could we agree on a common political goal? I'd welcome a *serious* study about the politics in open source, but could people please stop claiming that they know what everybody else in the community thinks? Does open source have a political impact? Yes, of course. But is this really the prime reason why the developers are doing it? Greetings, Hanno Long-time & happy user of Linux in corporate settings. (Gasp! Evil commercial conglomerates!) --=20 Hanno Müller, +49-40-5603170, http://www.hanno.de Meet the digital politician: http://www.phrasemonger.org "Scientific, but true." | ||
From: "The Phantom" <thephantom@psn.net> To: <letters@lwn.net> Subject: Napster, DVDCCA and Freeware Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 00:32:33 -0500 Gentlemen, Steve Ballmer's claims that Linux is a communist phenomenon are hilarious! Your editorial puts him in his proper place, but even you missed something pretty fundamental. The Linux kernel is a gift from Linus Torvalds. Yes indeed, a gift. He wrote it, (or parts of it anyway) it is his PERSONAL PROPERTY just like a car or a toothbrush, and he gives it away. He's a cool guy, and a smart one. He is smart because he knows "Freeware" isn't free. The people who work on it don't get paid money for the most part, but they do get cool points in the computer industry. Cool points are definitely worth money in a job interview. Linus gets mega cool points AND the world's best resume. Hell, it may even get him a frigging Green Card. Worthwhile return on time invested? Oh yeah. Capitalism at it's finest, I'd say. Napster on the other hand is organized crime, as Eric Raymond so ably said last week. When you buy a CD with Linux on it, you can post it to the web and broadcast a billion copies if you want because Linus said it was OK. Madonna did NOT say it was ok to do that with her CD. So if you give away a billion MP3s of her stuff, you are STEALING. Morally, even if there is some weasel way the lawyers can wiggle out. I think something like Napster would be great if record companies put their whole back list on there and charged admission. Five bucks for all the obscure dreck you can download. THAT would be cool, because then you could find all those obscure one hit wonders out there, make your own CD's, and what have you without ripping off the owners. If bands want to do an end run around the established companies, release free samples, publish on the web etc, far out. Napster is a great place for that too. Give away MP3s for free, sell CDs for cheap. Even starving students can pony up a buck or two for a CD, which is what they would sell for if you took Columbia and RCA out of the loop. The DVDCCA lawsuit is in a third category. This is clearly somebody trying to make balky hardware work with their Linux box, not a nefarious scheme to rip off the DVD decoding secrets from the manufacturers. I'm coming down on the side of the defendants for the following reasons. First, DeCCS is not a work of art, it is worthless without the associated hardware, and sold AS PART OF the hardware. The kids bought the hardware AND the software and are now the owners of their copy. They are not licensees or renters or any other such thing because they did not agree to any such contract when they bought the DVD drive. If a guy sells a book with a secret message in it, does he have any right to be upset if you decode the message ? I think not. He sold the message to you with the book. Second, the manufacturer looses NOTHING if some teenagers make a device driver to run the DVD hardware under Linux. No loss, therefore no harm, therefore no foul. Third, If you buy a Chevy does GM still own the software that runs the engine management computer? Doubt it! You bought it fair and square, it's yours. If you hack the computer and develop a gizmo to tweak your spark curve or fuel injectors are you stealing? Nope. What if you show your tweaker gizmo to other people, maybe even sell it? Nope. If you copy the computer in the car and sell it or give it away, THEN it's stealing. Same as a fake Swiss Army watch. However the law may differ on this point, I am not sure. Laws seldom follow morality, except by accident. So there you go. Nice news magazine you have here too. Keep up the good work. The Phantom http://www.neptune.psn.net/~thephantom/ | ||
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